Disconnect
by Zero's Wings
Summary: A new fic about Quatre's past! Read my other fic, The Awakening first. Brief strong language
1. Disconnect Part 1

Note: This is the story of Quatre's past, covering everything that happens before, during, and after the Manga 'Episode Zero.' You don't need to read that to understand this. Also, there is some strong language (From Quatre of all people!) Please read my other fic, "The Awakening" first! Oh yeah, and please Read & Review!!!  
  
Disconnect - Part I  
By Zero's Wings  
  
Through the Palladian windows with gold panels, into a beautiful Victorian-style mansion, the intricate crown molding, the massive, embroidered draperies, a queen-sized bed with gold and ruby colored weavings upon a coverlet, and below a huge, feathersoft mattress.  
  
In the bed, nearly consumed by it, was the form of a thin, pale woman who seemed so fragile that she could break to pieces in your arms like a porcelain doll. Her face was like a porcelain doll as well, soft, delicate, and flawlessly beautiful. Two narrow tufts of golden hair fell down around her face, soaked with the sweat of her intense labor. She could be heard moaning softly under the sheets of her bed.  
  
The woman's husband, and tall, dark, man of a mixed European and Arabian descent. He stood at the frail woman's bedside, holding their newborn son. He was trying to mask his anger, but his body shook with fury nonetheless.  
  
"I've never seen a woman as rash as you! You knew that giving birth to this child would cost you your life." She tried to answer, but was nearly too weak to even speak.  
  
"But...I wanted to have your child..." Her voice was as sweet as the sundrop dew of a morning in July.  
  
A moment later, the gorgeous face fell and her eyes closed. She had died. One of the servants beside her mouthed this silently to the husband. Tears were streaming down the faces of everyone in the room, including those of the Winner families' first and only newborn son.  
  
The other children of the Winner family were all test-tube babies, all female. The family had reproductive abnormalities since they moved to the artificial environment of the colonies. No one before Miss Quaterine had attempting a natural birth since the first generation of Winner colonists. The cause of her mixing waves of pain and joy, her son, Quatre, had a soft face and blond hair, like his mother. He was bawling loudly.  
  
"That's right, Quatre. Go ahead and cry. Your mother was a proud woman. And you killed her." The furious husband whispered this close to the child's face, his voice wavering and rough with bitterness.  
  
The man handed the sobbing child to a servant and left the room, angry and confused.  
  
12 years later...  
  
Huge oil derricks rose up on the horizon like dead, blackened trees, twisted into x-shaped grids that scarred the artificial clouds in the loop-the-loop sky. A barren colony. The infertile mother hiding in shame in the corner of the nursery. The desert place. The shit hole of the universe, Quatre thought bitterly. He had fought with his father for long enough. As he looked to the draining wastelands of his father's natural resource satellite, he thought of his birth, his soulless, empty birth in a tube.   
  
Mothers of this colony were infertile, perhaps because god would not let children be born in such a miserable place. But people don't care about that, do they? No, their selfishness will be restrained by no one, not even the will of god himself.  
  
Quatre watched as the oil pumps rocked back and forth, pivoting like lovers in mid-coitus. He was a rich son, but a neglected one. He and his forty-seven sisters were regarded as lower forms of humanity, having been conceived by artificial means. They were disposable tools, expendable servants, and he, the lowly, bastard son.  
  
Even though he was careless and callous, Quatre's kind heart could not be buried by his cruelly chosen life condition.  
  
"Father..." he sighed, looking to the stars. His face was warm and gentle now. He raised the detonation switch that had been in his hand and his expression hardened. "...fuck you."  
  
He pressed the trigger.  
  
Almost instantly, the oil fields around him erupted into a sea of flame. His father's fortune on this colony had vanished in an instant. Quatre had no reason to stay; his father had already disowned him after their big fight. It was all over now.  
  
*****  
  
A small, gracefully designed shuttle sailed through the vacuum of space. It was in the shape of a teardrop and had a swooping neck like a brilliant, white egret. On board were Quatre and his entourage of servants and advisors. The young boy was wearing a black, formal-wear shirt with the collar turned up. The outfit was completed by a pair of brown slacks and a charcoal vest with gold buttons.  
  
The spacecraft's co-pilot came into the cabin area and announced, to no one in particular, that the shuttle would reach Earth soon. Quatre started, his blue eyes flashing open in anger.  
  
"Don't wake me again," he replied tersely, then began to fall back asleep.  
  
The co-pilot went back to his control station. The advisors and bodyguards dispersed to various seats in the shuttle. As the co-pilot rejoined the pilot in the cockpit, he muttered: "Man, that kid sure has an attitude!"  
"You should expect that from the next head of the Winner family. It's just the way that he looks down on people that bothers me. But don't let any of that bother you, he's just another test tube baby. All the Winner kids are."  
  
"Disrespectful little shit..." the co-pilot muttered.  
  
As the shuttle continued to fly along the path of Minovsky particles that acted like wind currents in the dead void of space, four larger ships began to close in on it. These ships were not fancy or appealing to one's aesthetic sense like Quatre's shuttle. They were practical, stripped down ships, probably freighters at some point, which had been equipped with heavy assault weapons.  
  
One of the ships flew in very close to the shuttle and its front opened and formed a telescopic gateway between the two ships. The passage's automatic systems pressurized it with oxygen. A group of large, burly men of Middle Eastern descent walked through.  
  
The heavy, titanium door at the back of the shuttle began to rattle. A blinding light and a stream of sparks came through the sides of the door, and it fell of its hinges. The metal door hit the ground with a resounding thud and it sizzled with the heat of soldering. The men from the passage stepped on board the shuttle and leveled sub-machine guns at the crew and passengers. The man at the front of their group stepped forward and spoke in a deep, commanding voice.  
  
"We claim this ship and all aboard in the name of the Maguanac corps! All hostages must quickly proceed through the passageway back to our ship."  
  
Quatre was startled awake by the man's thunderous voice. "What the hell's going on here? Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?!" A large man wearing desert gear and a small fez strode up to Quatre and hit the boy in the stomach with the but of is rifle. Quatre slumped down in his seat, groaning thinly with the wind knocked out of his lungs, then quickly regained his composure and stared up at the man who had hit him.  
  
"Get going, brat!" The man grabbed Quatre by the collar and hauled him out of the ship. Most of the Maguanacs left the ship immediately, but a few, including the leader, stayed behind and began to roughly search the ship.   
  
As Quatre observed all of this with a passing interest, the Maguanacs were busily preparing their ship for de-insertion procedures. A glowing monitor on the new ship's bridge flashed to life above Quatre's head. The leader spoke to the man who had hit Quatre with his rifle.  
  
"Audah, this is just a civilian shuttle. It's totally devoid of weapons and there isn't any fuel on board either."  
  
"That's not surprising," Quatre muttered. "We were just about to land on Earth anyway."  
  
"Keep quiet, boy!" Audah hissed.  
  
"I say we scuttle the craft and leave before the Alliance military shows up." The leader turned off his comm signal and started back through the tubular walkway between the two ships.  
  
When he returned with his men, the rest of the Maguanacs greeted him as though they hadn't laid eyes on each other for months and it was cause for celebration. They hugged and sang merrily and laughed together as their ship disengaged from the empty shuttle.  
  
Quatre flinched as all four of the Maguanac ships trained their forward guns to the beautifully crafted, Winner family shuttle and fired. It exploded in a blinding flash of light and was gone, nothing but floating ash and debris. Quatre scowled and turned away. He had always been fond of that ship.  
  
*****  
  
The Maguanacs took their ships to the only safe haven they knew of in the Earth Sphere: The natural resource satellite called MO-III.  
  
The workers at MO-III were mostly criminals and people that the Alliance had banished due to their anti-governmental sentiments. There was supposedly an elaborate labor union supporting the workers, but that was just an Alliance cover story. The truth of the matter was, all the people on MO-III were treated like slaves. Most had ironically become hostages when the Maguanacs made the resource satellite their headquarters, but this was actually a step up in their lives' conditions. This was because the Maguanacs promised that, after their demands were met; they would return all their hostages to their respective homes on Earth. That was the secret goal of the corps as well, to simply return home; they were not interested in a revolution.  
  
The various people that the Maguanacs had captured on their ships and on the resource satellite were rounded up into large groups, each watched over by a man toting a threat-ening automatic rifle.  
  
After being huddled together with a colorful variety of people from the satellite and elsewhere, Quatre found the courage to approach the Maguanac leader. He needed to know this man's intentions.  
  
Rasid, the leader of the corps, was a giant of a man, of mixed middle-eastern descent with a sharp, blocky, ex-military style haircut. His face was tightly drawn with a square jaw and an abruptly pointed chin.  
  
"I'm Quatre Raberba Winner," the boy said meekly, as opposed to his usually intense and haughty tone.  
  
"I don't care," Rasid growled, brushing past him  
"Wait!" Quatre cried.  
  
"Listen, kid!" the Maguanac leader turned around fiercely, "You aren't being pampered in one of your father's mansions anymore. I have my own problems, and I don't have the time, patience, or interest to deal with any of yours. So stay out of my way, unless you want to be shoved out the nearest airlock!" Quatre stumbled backwards, unsettled. No one had ever spoken to him that way, not even his father during their big fight that had led to Quatre's estrangement from the Winner family. Rasid turned around and kept walking. A group of Maguanacs joined him, all chattering at once about something or other. Amazingly, he seemed to be able to take in everything they had to say simultaneously, and respond to each man in turn.   
  
"But I just want to know what you're going to do with me!" Quatre called out, but the man was already too far away to hear him. The Maguanac named Audah walked up to Quatre, shouldered his rifle, and spit.  
  
"You're our hostage, at least until we find safe passage to Earth."  
  
"How convenient," Quatre said, "I was headed for Earth, as well."  
  
"I hate to tell ya this, kid, but we're probably gonna leave you here. You aren't of any use to us; you're just a kid. You're extra baggage."  
  
"That's not true," Quatre protested, "I learned how to pilot a mobile suit out in the desert of my colony. No one in the whole town could beat me one-on-one!"  
  
"Is that so?" Audah mused, rubbing the remnants of a shaved-off goatee on his chin. "Well, I'll think about it. Until then, you just stay quiet and out of Rasid's way. He's got enough to worry about. C'mon, I'll show you to your cell."  
  
Audah led Quatre to a cramped, little room with metal walls and a ceiling that stretched up nearly fifteen feet. Inside was a boy, about Quatre's age, sitting cross-legged in the corner. He was dressed in a clown costume.  
  
"Hey clown!" Audah yelled, "I got a cell mate for you!" He shoved Quatre in and closed the thick steel door. It locked automatically.  
  
Quatre sat down and tried to strike up a conversation with his new cellmate. The boy clown remained silent the entire time. The boy didn't begin to talk until Quatre had nearly fallen asleep and even then, the boy spoke in hushed tones, quickly and succinctly, and his expression did not change.  
  
These Maguanacs are fools," he said, not in anger, but with perfect emotional detachment and cold, scalpel-sharp observation. "They let emotions play as a factor in each of their missions. Very unprofessional. They are careless, too. I'll escape soon."  
  
"They seem nice to me," Quatre replied diplomatically.  
  
"They kidnapped you, how can you feel that way?"  
  
"I don't know. They just don't seem to mean any harm, and they said that they might even bring me to Earth with them," Quatre said hopefully.  
  
"Well, unlike you, I don't want to go to the Earth. I was just fine where I was."  
  
"Working as a clown?"  
  
"Yes, with a traveling circus. My sister is there as well."  
  
"Oh, that must be nice," Quatre said. "Is she here as well?"  
  
"No, she had the good sense to escape when the Maguancs came to loot our vessels. We travel to different colonies with the circus, and they caught us off guard when we were in transit."  
  
Quatre yawned and found himself struggling not to fall asleep. He closed his eyes for a few minutes, but opened them again before he really started to drift off. That was when he noticed that the boy who had been in the cell was gone.  
  
"Hmm...and I didn't even get to know his name," Quatre muttered in disappointment. Then he heard a voice echoing above him.  
  
"That's okay," the boy yelled down to Quatre, his voice reverberating off the metal walls somewhere above. "I don't have one."  
  
Quatre looked up and saw a metal grate swing shut about twelve feet over his head.  
How the hell did he get all the way up there? Quatre wondered, and then he slid down against the wall and fell asleep in the darkness of the cell.  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Disconnect Part 2

Disclaimer: I'm not stealing GW. I'm amusing myself. In fact, writing fics could occupy time that I would otherwise use to pursue a life of crime! So don't sue me and take away the rights of us fanfic authors. It's up to you to prevent the corruption of today's youth!  
  
Disconnect - Part 2  
By Zero's Wings  
  
The next morning, Rasid woke Quatre and took him into a small room with a lot of computer equipment. There was a large monitor tilted down at the floor on the wall in the front of the room.  
  
"We are going to speak with your father, kid. He happens to be one of the high rollers on our list for hostage settlements," Rasid explained. "You can see him here if you want, but stay about five feet back and he won't be able to see you."  
  
"I'm sorry, sir," Quatre said quietly, "but I don't think I'll be of much worth as a hostage except as a collection of organic chemicals. You see, I was born by artificial means. My father doesn't love me. No one loves me." Quatre's face fell into darkness. "And I don't love anyone either."  
  
Mr. Winner's image slowly faded in with a hint of irresolute silver. Rasid stepped up to the monitor and began making arrangements with him to protect the corps and their hostages in exchange for the life of his son. To Quatre's amazement, Mr. Winner accepted all of their conditions without a word of argument. He then asked if he could see Quatre, which surprised the boy even more.  
  
Quatre strode up to the monitor and looked at his father with a hateful glare.  
  
"What do you want?" Quatre asked in a snotty voice. His father looked at him in confusion.  
  
"You aren't imprisoned or at least tied up? This man, Rasid, certainly takes good care of his hostages."  
  
"Not that you care," Quatre said in his most vilifying tone. His father looked down at him, disconcerted. Quatre's tightly pinched mouth issued a horrible laugh, a laugh terrifying because it was so much bigger than him, and contained so much more hate than his kind, little heart could bear. Perhaps his heart spat forth that laugh only to drive it from his untouched soul. "Oh," he said in twisted sarcasm, the laugh still echoing in the room as the evil dissipated, "you're surprised one of your tools did something on it's own, aren't you?"  
  
"You...You're still talking like that?"  
  
"Of course!" Quatre exploded, choking back tears in the process. "You created me and my sisters to suit the needs of the Winner family. You don't give a damn about any of us!! I'm just one of your stupid pawns! You can make as many of me as you want. All you people wanted was a bunch of dumb robots who would do exactly as told!"  
  
"Quatre, that simply isn't true."  
  
To Quatre's shock, Rasid grabbed him roughly by the shoulder, spun him around, and slapped his face hard.  
  
"What the hell did you do that for?" Quatre asked vehemently. Rasid, however, was equally angry.  
  
"I don't know what your problem is, kid, but why don't you stop feeling sorry for yourself and show a little pride in who you are. God made all of us. It doesn't matter how." Rasid had a very serious look on his face. "We Maguanacs were all conceived in test tubes. It doesn't matter though. Even if we have fewer things that we can call our own, we will achieve more in our lifetimes than that man ever will!" He yelled defiantly, his voice booming and his massive hand pointing to the man on the video screen.  
  
"Don't listen to him, Quatre," Mr. Winner said softly. "You will always be better than them. You are my one and only son, and the only child born from my wife's womb. She died having you, but she was brave and proud of who she was, just as you should be."  
  
I knew. Somehow, I always knew, Quatre thought in wonderment. Then his face turned back to cold anger. The nightmares are real, then. How could you have said that to me? I was a mere child.  
  
"Father, I remember that day, the day I entered this world. I know what you said." Mr. Winner fell backwards, his eyes widening. It was as if he was being revisited by an old nightmare.  
  
"How could you do that. You must be even colder than I am, to have the first words a child hears in his life be that he had just killed his mother."  
  
"I regret those words to this day, Quatre." The man, caught in his old sins, hung his head in sorrow. "However, you must believe me when I say that you are not cold, not in comparison to me or anyone else. You have so much kindness in your heart."  
  
"Shut up! Shut up!" Quatre cried, covering his ears with his hands. "I hate my kindness, my disgusting and unnecessary kindness, even more than I hate you! It just gets in my way!" Quatre turned to a small computer screen projecting his father's face. He brought his head back, then slammed it with as much force as he could muster into the screen. When he brought his head back up, the glass had shattered and blood ran from his forehead down his face, and into his eyes, as well, blocking his vision occasionally with dark, floating shapes.  
  
"Quatre..." his father said desperately from the overhead monitor, but the enraged child couldn't even hear him.  
  
Quatre grabbed a chair up from one of the computer stations and threw it at the image of his father. It struck the monitor, which exploded into a crystal rain of shards and white sparks. Quatre fell to his knees, empty and exhausted. Tears fell from the dark space of his face, his eyes concealed by shadowy locks of matted, blonde hair.  
  
Quatre was thrown back in his cell, where he remained for several days. He was left with no human contact other than an occasional hand that shoved a tray of food through the narrow slot in the door. At last, a new prisoner was escorted in, this one by Rasid himself. He had never bothered to ask Quatre what happened to his first cell mate, the clown boy was of no use to him anyway. This prisoner was an older man, though, with a thin, waxed mustache. He was wearing a lab coat that accentuated his swelled belly.  
  
Rasid slammed the door again, plunging the two of them into relative darkness, except for a small, flickering light on the distant ceiling above.   
  
"Where did they find you?" Quatre asked with a passing interest.  
  
"I came off a science vessel. I was carrying some dangerous chemical compounds onboard and there was a containment leak. These Maguanac...they're unusual men. I didn't ask for their help, but they came to my rescue regardless. I'm not really a hostage like you."  
  
"I don't mind being here. These men are more of a family then I ever could've hoped for back on the colony where I was born."  
  
"Well then, I pity you," the scientist said. He looked at Quatre with small beady eyes that poked out from under folds of thick skin, full of wrinkles and fat. Even so, there was a lot of kindness in those eyes.  
  
"If you wish, child, you may call me by my codename, which is H. My real name isn't important."   
  
Great, Quatre thought, he's delusional.  
  
"Actually, I would prefer if you put my doctorate before it, but that's a small matter."  
  
"No problem," Quatre replied, bored and half-asleep. For awhile the man just sat there, occasionally studying Quatre or simply wrapped up in his own contemplation.  
  
Late in the night, when Quatre was fast asleep, Dr. H crept over to him and shook him gently to wake him.  
  
"Hey, are you awake, child?"  
  
"My name is Quatre," he said groggily, but still with a hint of exasperation.  
  
"How would you like to come to Earth with me?"  
  
"I was trying to get there on my own before these Maguanacs found me."  
  
"You can escape with me tomorrow, then. They said the repairs to my ship would be done soon, and I'm sure I can smuggle you onboard."  
  
"Thank you for the offer," Quatre said, "but I don't want that. These people may need my help."  
  
"The Maguanacs?" Dr. H asked. The old scientist chuckled when Quatre nodded his head. "I'm sure they can manage on their own, Quatre."  
  
"No, I mean that. I feel indebted to them some how. They took me in--"  
  
"They kidnapped you," Dr. H corrected.  
  
"They were kind to me. Just as you said, they didn't need to take us in. I'm useless to them. They could've just as easily blown me up along with my ship."  
  
"I fail to see how that would make you feel indebted to them," Dr. H said, puzzled. But, if you would rather stay and be shot to pieces by the Alliance military, feel free to do so. I'm just offering you a way out. Perhaps..." With that the old man fell silent, and was asleep a few seconds later. Quatre did the same, but was now confused at his own feelings of loyalty to the Maguanacs and wondering what is fate would be.  
  
*****  
  
In the morning, Quatre was awoken by the loud calls of alarms. This was followed by a series of explosions that wracked the MO-III satellite. The door to Quatre's cell slid open along with all the others in the cell block. Dr. H was gone. Rasid's voice bellowed through the loudspeakers in the hall.  
  
"All able-bodied men are to proceed to the docking bay! We are under attack from the Alliance military!"  
  
"What I get for sleeping late," Quatre mused.  
  
Quatre walked into the docking bay, which had become a hellish scene of chaos and destruction. Apparently, one of the mobile suits' engines had exploded during takeoff and its wreckage was now blocking the other suits from leaving and defending against the onslaught of the Alliance Space Leos.  
  
Quatre ran to Audah, who was climbing into the cockpit of his mobile suit.  
  
"Let me help! I can pilot a mobile suit!" Quatre cried up at the Maguanac. Audah ignored him, continuing into the guts of the massive piece of machinery.  
  
"Forget it, kid! You'd just be in the way!" he yelled to Quatre. At that moment, Rasid walked into the docking bay. He placed his hand on Quatre's shoulder. The Maguanac leader had a soft splint around his arm, with bandages packed tightly all over his shoulder.  
  
"My arm was hurt by a piece of shrapnel when that mobile suit exploded. You can have my suit." Quatre looked up at him in wonderment, his eyes bright and joyful for the first time. The other Maguanacs looked at their leader, astonished.  
  
"Sir, are you really sure that's a wise thing to do?" Abdul asked. Rasid just smiled.  
  
"He has had a great amount faith in us, and I think we should put an equal amount of faith in him." Rasid then turned on his universal comm and addressed the entire corps.  
  
"I will not be participating in the battle today. I would only be a nuisance to all of you with my injury. This boy will take my place. He will give commands, so you should all refer to him as 'Master Quatre' from now on. Understood?" Quatre's face beamed with excitement. He turned off the comm and spoke to Quatre alone. "Don't do anything reckless out there. Just try to keep everyone alive and organized."  
  
"Roger!" Quatre began to head for the Rasid's suit, an unusual one that seemed to have been upgraded by a mishmash of weapons and spare parts from other suits. It had one grotesquely oversized arm that made the suit seem somehow deformed. The other arm was equally strange, as it held an extendible dobergun, and the pole-shaped barrel of it was nearly twice as long as the suit itself. Quatre grabbed onto a long cable attached to a hook above the cockpit. The cable began to reel in, bringing him up higher against the mobile suit.  
  
"Master Quatre, catch!" At first Quatre didn't recognize himself by his new title, and then he glimpsed an object being hurled toward him. He caught it in mid-air. It was a pair of flight goggles, much like the pair he had when he raced mobile suits through the deserts on the outskirts of his hometown. He looked down to the ground, which was rapidly dropping out from underneath him, and saw Rasid smiling.  
  
"My father gave me those," Rasid called up to him. "I never go into battle without them!"  
  
"Thank you...I will cherish them," Quatre said softly, holding the goggles close to his heart.  
  
*****  
  
The mangled wreckage that was caught in the primary docking bay was suddenly thrust out an airlock with explosive force. Several Maguanac suits followed the debris out and were quickly sucked into the vacuum of space and the heart of the battle.  
  
To Quatre, the entire battle flashed around him in a blur. He pulled the thrusters up and his suit narrowly cut through a huge salvo of white, comet-tailed missiles. Explosions lit up his cockpit, and he swerved around expanding clouds of fire, past hailstorms of bullets and whirling trails of ejected shell casings.   
  
A light from behind caught Quatre's eye. He swiveled the torso of his mobile suit to see the blinding object behind him. As Quatre turned, the light was revealed to be coming from the thrusters of a Leo that had snuck up on him. It was too late. He was caught.  
  
The Leo raised its rifle and prepared to fire at him. But just as it was about to pull the trigger, its upper body twisted backward and its arms flailed helplessly behind it.  
  
Quatre slowly opened his eyes back up, then his expression changed from terror, to surprise, to a triumphant grin. Unintentionally, Quatre had impaled the Leo on the barrel of his oversized rifle when he turned around. He flipped up a switch on the main trigger, pressed the button underneath, and watched as the Leo was sucked off the end of the barrel and vaporized in a tremendous, arching incandescence.  
  
When the pilots returned to the docking bay, there were cheers all around. There was singing and laughter and huge festivities, despite the fact that the Maguanacs had claimed victory for little more than themselves and a ship that was empty with the exception of a few scared hostages. Quatre, who had destroyed five Leos amidst the confusion, was thrust into the air and cheered for. It was unquestionably the happiest moment of his life.  
  
The Maguanacs pressed on with renewed spirits, and continued to the Earth, fighting the Alliance as it came, and savoring their victories, in many of which Quatre single-handedly turned the odds in their favor. For his piloting skills, Quatre kept his title of 'master,' and gained respect amongst Rasid and the entire Maguanac corps.  
  
The Maguanac corps landed in a deserted area on the Ivory Coast, in the United States of Africa. They hid their suits in the shallow waters of the coast and set up a large base camp. They would live there until they could find a way of getting to Baghdad undetected, where Rasid had a few partners in the trading business who could give the corps shelter, provisions, and transportation for the passengers to each of their families.  
  
One night, Quatre wandered out past the camp to explore the vast, empty beaches. He walked up over a small inclined hill to relieve himself and saw something in the valley below: a massive, twenty-two-wheel truck. Quatre rushed up to it to investigate. An envelope had been posted on the windshield, addressed to Quatre. He pulled it from the glass surface in complete disbelief. He studied it, reading his name over and over, as if the envelope could not be real. When he finally shook off the surreal feeling, he opened the envelope and took out the letter inside. It was written in a graceful, spidery hand, almost like calligraphy. The note read:  
  
Dear Quatre,  
  
I am sorry I could not be here to greet you. I hope you find my present; I could only approximate where your ship would land from an offshore outpost's radar trackings. I won't bore you with such things though, I'm sure you are anxious to unwrap your present. You are a very kind person, Quatre, and I feel that you can take on this great amount of responsibility. You are very mature for your age, I can tell that there is far more to you than what lies on the surface. I will see you again some day, I can guarantee you that, but until then, this is my gift to you.   
Sincerely,  
Dr. H  
  
Quatre folded up the note and put it in his vest pocket. As he circled the truck, he realized that it was attached to a gigantic flatbed, really more like a barge on wheels. And there was a brown tarp that covered the entirety of the flatbed. And there was something beneath that tarp. Something huge...  



	3. Disconnect Part 3

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing isn't mine. This is fandom material that does not infringe upon the copyrights set by the GW creators.  
  
Disconnect - part3  
By Zero's Wings  
  
A white curtain billowed in the wind. It gave way, spread back like a cloak, and exposed to the harsh African sun and sands a figure of brutally constructed metal projections. With a flexing movement, the white curtain enveloped the metal structure once more; all except the head, with its gold crest and gleaming, green crystal eyes.  
  
Heat gave the horizon a wavering consistency. A large mobile suit, known as a Gundam because of its rare Gundanium composition, rushed through the gritty desert sea. Its eyes flashed suddenly, and then it drew back its cloak and the thrusters on its backpack. The internal coolers shut down and it soared away in a tornado of sand and dust from thirsty traveler's bones.  
  
The Gundam touched down in the middle of a small village. There was a battle going on in the distance between two mobile suits. They are of no concern to me, Quatre thought. He looked at the small village around him. But I can't let innocent civilians suffer because of their rivalry.   
  
Quatre removed his goggles and sat back in his Gundam's cockpit. It was an incredible piece of machinery; more often than not, it made him feel helpless and unworthy. However, its power also gave him a vicarious sense of invincibility. It was an odd, yet comforting balance; the suit made him feel alive.   
  
Quatre had decided that he would use this gift to defend those who could not defend themselves. He had known much suffering, of an emotional kind, and felt that no one deserved to feel that kind of emotion during their lives. Of course, the people of the poor village around him had known a totally different kind of suffering, but it was all derived from the same emotions. It was the same awful feelings that Quatre felt, the lingering poison, the darkness, the sickness, the elusive and indescribable pall covering his soul and welling up disquieting sensations in his gut.  
  
The battle on the horizon began to die down. One of the mobile suits was a customized Leo with a desert cloak, and the other was more difficult to see and identify. Quatre got an overwhelming impression of size and explosive power, long, twisting limbs like whips, and a coating of shiny black armor. The overall shape of the mobile suit was lost to him, as it whirled around so quickly, and with such bewildering movements. It gripped the Leo in its many lashing arms and claws, and seemed to envelope the mobile suit. Moments later, it was gone, leaving only small dust clouds and a few jagged tracks in the sand.  
  
Seeing that any threat to the village had vanished, Quatre flew his Gundam up over a ridge of sand dunes and landed it. He entered the village alone; knowing the Gundam would draw too much attention and questioning toward him.  
  
Quatre looked at the people who called this wasteland home. They stared back, with as much curiosity and interest as they could muster; it was difficult to do anything when you are starving and caught on the edge of a war zone. Their faces were all calling out to him with different expressions and features, but there was one constant amongst them: an impermeable wall of sadness. They were all so full of longing, so desperate. It was as though their lives were just paused, waiting for something, anything to happen and deliver them from this living hell. Children had swelled stomachs from malnutrition. Their parents could hardly see because of their dysentery, the surrounding filth, dust, and the clouds of flies.  
  
The young pilot was emotionally unprepared for all of this. Tears welled up in his eyes as he passed by the crowd of starving onlookers. He had always thought that his own emotions were strong enough to be comparable to any other suffering in the world, and no matter what his condition or lifestyle, those emotions allowed him to be disgusted and happy with his own life. Such thoughts were blasted from his head at the speed of light when he saw these people. His own emotional ruminations seemed so petty and child-like now; he was just lucky to be alive, and even luckier in that he had lived comfortably. His anger with his father, his self-loathing, he viewed it now as truly pathetic.  
  
There was a half-collapsed metal shack in the dead center of the village. It seemed to have been constructed as part of an alliance outpost, but it was now a crude shell that housed these unfortunate people.  
  
As Quatre walked toward the shack, he tried to shake his feelings of disbelief. The fact that there were still starving people, on a world that had conquered and colonized space and made incredible leaps in technology, seemed like pure absurdity to him.  
  
Quatre stopped in the entrance of the small building. The open doorway had been covered with a tapestry, woven beautifully and covered with bold colors and spindly, archaic designs. He removed his goggles and winced at the stinging dirt and sand that was immediately thrown into his eyes. Everything was so dry and hot, he wished sorely that he had the foresight to bring some water along.  
  
Quatre stepped inside the small building, it was more like a military bunker actually, and saw a group of men sitting cross-legged in front of a small, central hub, a computer mainframe that had been stripped bare and smashed. These men were rail-thin, with flesh darker than a starless night, and shriveled yet observant complexions. They were older than anyone else in the village by at least twenty years, yet their voices were youthful and soft as silk.  
  
"Wie gaan dit met u?" one of the elders asked in a clipped, guttural tongue.  
  
Quatre shook his head, confused.  
  
"I'm sorry," he said politely, "I don't speak your language. Do you speak English?"  
  
He was met with silence and questioning stares. He tried again in all the other languages he knew: French, German, and Spanish.  
  
"Parlez-vous francais?"  
  
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"  
  
"Usted habla espanol?"  
  
His attempts seemed to be in vain, and then the very oldest of the group finally responded.  
  
"I speak English. Je parle francais. Ich spreche das Deutsch. Hablo espanol." He made each response incredibly clearly and with only a subtle trace of accent.  
  
"English is OK," Quatre said. The withered, old man nodded and smiled kindly.  
  
"You are very young," the elder observed, "where did you come from, and how did you travel so far?" His English was impeccable and unwavering.  
  
"My family lives in the deserts," the young man replied. "I ran away from them." What he said was not technically a lie, but it made him feel uncomfortable nonetheless.  
  
"You are quite welcome here, but I must ask, why did you come? Most travelers want to leave as soon as possible." Quatre hesitated, then thought of the fight he saw between those two mobile suits.  
  
"Leave! I could never just leave you people to suffer," Quatre exclaimed.  
  
"We do not suffer, we simply live. Our lives may not be as comfortable as yours, but it is the life that we were chosen for. I am curious though, tell me why you came to our village."  
  
"There was a battle near the town. I was curious. I...have always held a fascination for mobile suits."  
  
"You speak of the demons," the elder said softly, rubbing his left temple. "They fight often. We leave them alone, but they have ventured closer and closer to the town. We fear that they may lay waste to the town, but we cannot leave. We have no place to go, most of us are to weak from age or hunger to travel, and our ancestors and gods still reside in this place."   
  
Demons, Quatre mused. These people must have had no contact with mobile suits for their entire lives. The thought alone seemed incredible to him. Even before the Maguanac, he had always lived around the giant machines. They swept over his father's oil fields on the resource satellites and barren colonies, they scraped the edge of the city skylines in the urban areas of L-4, and they could be seen trundling through the fields by his house like enormous beetles.  
  
"One demon has plagued our villages for some time, and we fear it may come to take our lives one day. It has no name, it is death."  
  
"Has any demon ever defeated it in combat?"  
  
"No, it is unstoppable." The elder spoke with fear in his voice, and Quatre knew that whatever that thing was, it posed far more of a threat than local superstitions and a veil of myths led on. It posed a very real danger to these people, but he was confident that his Gundam could stop it.  
  
Quatre didn't want to trouble these people, so he spent the night in his Gundam's cockpit. It was probably more comfortable than any bed these forsaken people could provide him with anyway.  
  
As morning rose, Quatre could once again see two mobile suits fighting on the horizon. And once again, the mysterious, black form swallowed up a weaker, smaller mobile suit. This time, however, things did not go so smoothly. The suit opposing that black nightmare was one of the Alliance's newest models, an Aries. Better equipped for flight in battle, it engaged its thrusters while still in the grasp of the larger suit's grappling arms and pincers. It almost seemed to free itself from the monster when a huge, black, revolving cannon swiveled out from one of the larger suit's arms. The gun roared as it spat out a hail of laser fire. The blasts tore apart the thin walls of makeshift homes and beat the Aries into a smoking pulp. It fell away and crushed a few onlookers as it landed in the middle of the town. Quatre watched, frozen in horror. His tears flashed with orange and yellow flame, reflected off the burning roofs of houses.  
  
End of part3  



	4. Disconnect Part 4 - Finale

Disclaimer: Hey! It's fanfiction! If you sue me, I'll attack with my lazy-eyed, apocalyptic, blue plastic cow of despair!  
  
Disconnect - Part 4  
By Zero's Wings  
  
The fires finally died down late in the afternoon. No one in the village could douse those flames; their supply of water was simply too limited and precious. The village elders had a team of the strongest, most able-bodied men to go about the village to help the victims and their families. Quatre stayed and spoke with the elders, who looked truly concerned and afraid. Eventually one of the men returned and spoke to the multi-lingual leader of the village. He seemed to age ten years upon hearing the man's message. He told the others in Afrikaans, then spoke to Quatre in English.  
"The demons claimed the lives of four people today."  
"No!" Quatre yelled, unable to stop the tears from rolling down his face. Haven't these people suffered enough, god?  
"This is unusual. The demons have never taken lives before. We must have done something to upset them."  
"It's not your fault!" Quatre cried indignantly. "It's those stupid pilots in their mobile suits! They think they can come right in and do as they please!"  
"Don't be upset, young one. There is nothing that any of us can do. Just accept it. It's a natural part of life, and we must not waste our energy when those poor souls would only want us to keep on living."  
"It's not natural," Quatre protested through gritted teeth. "It's the fault of that damned mobile suit, and whatever idiot was piloting it."  
Quatre left the hut and ran toward the curling, black towers of smoke. When he arrived, he saw awful things that would be imprinted upon his memory for the rest of his life. People burned by the flames, others, their families crying as their bodies still smoldered. Quatre felt hatred welling up inside him. He gritted his teeth and squinted his bloodshot eyes until the world was awash in crimson. Whoever did this, he would find them and kill them. The thought scared him; he had never seriously wanted to kill another person ever before, but even that horror could not distract him from his rage for long.  
"I'll make things right...I promise," he said in a whisper, although he was actually addressing the entire village, and all the people beyond it who had been wronged unjustly.  
  
*****  
  
Quatre powered up his Gundam as he wiped tears from his face. He wrapped Rasid's flight goggles around his head and pulled back the throttle. He would destroy that cursed thing, that nightmare that was lurking in the desert. The Gundam's eyes flashed green and it began rushing through the desert in great leaps and bounds. Quatre saw everything from that center console, every displaced grain of sand, every wilted bit of brush or grass.  
The Gundam halted when it came to a series of odd-looking craters in the middle of the desert. They looked almost like they had been dug out of the ground by a living animal, but they were far too big for that to be possible. Quatre leaned the massive suit as far over the hole as he possibly could without losing his center of balance, and had the Gundam's weapons system ready a signal flare. A missile shot out of the Gundam's right shoulder port and its casing exploded open. A phosphorescent, pink flare shot out and traveled into the hole, but was quickly swallowed up by darkness. Quatre looked down into the hole, confused, and then shot another flare into it. This time, the flare was visibly extinguished by a massive wave of earth. It blasted up out of the abyss with a tremendous, roaring sound.   
When the dust clouds parted, the young pilot was confronted by the most horrifying thing he had ever seen. It was difficult to tell whether what he was looking at was alive or artificial, but Quatre knew that it could only be a mobile suit because of its immense size. It had glistening, black armor and a multitude of spidery arms, each armed with a different weapon, and all of them equally wicked looking. Its weapons included: an incredibly sharp, double-edged saw blade, a rotating missile cannon, a huge Dobergun with a grenade attachment, and a half dozen pincers tucked under its lower thorax. Not to mention, it was as tall as Quatre's Gundam in a crouching position.  
You can do this, you can do this, you can do this, Quatre chanted in his mind. Besides, you can't turn back now. He gathered up his courage, swallowed his nerves, and his Gundam gracefully pulled two curved, heat shotals from its backpack.   
The spider monster reared its head back, stretching up to its full height and towering over Quatre. But Quatre was quick, and his Gundam landed the first blow, which nearly cut off the arm holding the suit's Dobergun. The monstrosity fell back and opened fire with its missile cannon, and amidst the flashes of fire and energy, it came at Quatre like a whirlwind. Its arms lashed and blades glinted in the hot sun as they cut into the Gundam's armor. Quatre fought valiantly, and managed to cut off one of the attackers rotating cannon arms, but at last neither he nor his Gundam could stand the vicious onslaught. Quatre lost control and the great, armored suit tumbled down to the ground.  
The hideous machine was soon on top of Quatre, and he watched, helpless, as the monster's belly swiveled up and released the set of nasty pincers from their clasped position under its thorax. The pincers moved back and forth more and more quickly, gathering up speed until they shredded apart the very air between the two suits. Then, the pincers attached themselves to the Gundam's cockpit and began ripping away the armor plating. Quatre yelled in surprise as a huge metal claw punctured the airlock seal in his cockpit. If I stay here, I'll be fishbait in a few seconds, Quatre thought with equal parts terror and urgency.  
Quatre turned a red switch on his central console. The cockpit door exploded open and was thrown toward the huge, spidery mobile suit with several tons of air pressure right behind it. Quatre leapt down from his Gundam, and the massive, whirling pincer blades missed his head by mere inches. When Quatre landed, he looked up just in time to see the enemy mobile suit tear through his Gundam's cockpit. The suit now seemed so large and black that it blotted out the sun. Quatre looked desperately for some weapon he could use against it, and then his eyes traveled down to the rotating cannon arm that had been cut off. Quatre ran to it, meaning to use it only as a shield against the suit's attacks, as he knew that he was a dead man on an open field with no cover. However, once he reached the twenty-foot long arm, he saw that it was still partially operational. A few lights were still flickering, and Quatre saw that the mechanics were very similar to that of his Gundam, H was familiar with its workings, of course, after crawling around in its steel and aluminum innards for hours at a time. Quatre recognized that this arm had independent lift-off capabilities. Suddenly, an idea sparked in his head. He grabbed two of the junctioning wires on the main circuit and tied them together. A red laser beam appeared. The beam would have to reflect off a glass surface to reach the power pack, and therefore cause the arm to take off. He looked around frantically for some piece of glass, but he knew that his search was futile. He was completely surrounded by desert, and had no supplies on his person.  
The main circuit on the arm shot forth a few sparks and Quatre ducked so that his hair would not be set on fire. As he dropped, the goggles that Rasid had given him fell off his head and onto the sand in front of him. Of course! The goggles! He pulled one of the lenses out of the goggles and shoved it in front of the laser. The beam bounced off at a perfect angle and shot into the thirsty power pack. Quatre dove for the ground as the arm's rockets engaged and it took off toward its owner.  
The spidery monster turned up from shredding apart the Gundam too late. Its own arm flew through the air and collided with it, firing off its built-in missile launchers. There was a shriek of metal grinding against metal, or perhaps it was a pitiful cry from a creature in its death throes, then the monster promptly exploded.  
Quatre stood up again when the burning chunks of metal stopped falling. He raised his hands to the sky and yelled at the top of his lungs, declaring his triumph to the earth and the heavens above. He rescued his battered Gundam and it limped back to the village.  
Quatre was greeted there as a hero. There was cheering and celebration, and he felt like he was back with the Maguanacs again. The elder approached Quatre with pride in his eyes. It was the first time that Quatre had ever seen the man leave his sitting position in that small hut.  
"You are a diamond amongst the rocks of the desert, my son." Quatre smiled at all of his friends.  
"No, I'm just an ordinary rock," he said with a trace of laughter.   
"Then you are a greatest rock in all the deserts sands." Quatre laughed at this, but accepted the comment, flattered.  
"I'm sorry there is nothing else I can do for you, though," Quatre said. At that moment, his Gundam's eyes flashed green with intensity. Two compartments on the sides of its legs opened up, and boxes fell out. They were filled with packaged food and bottled water, marked as fragile provisions. Quatre passed them out eagerly, and thanked his Gundam as he stared up at its metal plated face. But there was even more in those boxes than he thought at first. There was clothing, farming tools, and one box even had a small electric generator inside. Some of the people cried and hugged him, and Quatre felt a new sense of euphoria spreading over him. The people begged him to stay, but Quatre knew it was not meant to be. As he climbed into his Gundam's cockpit, he noticed a small plaque on the door hinge that said it was designed as a sand/rock type. Isn't that ironic, he thought. "Well, looks like I have a name for you, friend," he said to his Gundam.  
Quatre had made up his mind. He would keep on traveling, reunite with the Maguanacs in Baghdad, and then journey past that, helping the needy, the helpless, and the lonely. He couldn't solve all the world's problems, but he'd be damned if he weren't at least going to try. Even speaking with his father again, and filling in that deep, emotional scar seemed possible now. In fact, it seemed inevitable, because that was one cord that was too strong to ever break. He could never disconnect himself from that lifeline.  
  
~ End ~  
  
Please review! All of you who have enjoyed my fics but haven't written in with your opinion should do so now! Which did you like better? Why? Do you like my writing in general? I want to know and I love feedback!! ^_^  
  



	5. 2nd Interlude

Disclaimer: If it sounds familiar, it doesn't belong to me.  
  
2nd Interlude  
By Zero's Wings  
  
Finally Quatre finished his story, and fell back in his seat, exhausted. Trowa stared at him, not with the confusion and thinly veiled terror that he had after Heero's story, but with a look of sensitive contemplation, and a bit more respect than usual. Heero's face had a similar expression, but his eyes were more alive than Trowa's. Alive in a bad way, that is. Trowa's emerald eyes were simply dead of emotion, whereas Heero's danced with an icy fire, the cold, killing fire. Quatre smiled at them both. They would come around eventually. And besides, they were both far more human now than during the war. They would've never taken the time nor had the patience to listen to his story, nor would Heero share his own with them, not in a million years. Things were different, definitely changing for the better, and Quatre hoped that these admissions would help each of them sort through their own life and understand it.   
"What'd I miss?" Duo asked, finally emerging from the bathroom.  
"Nothin' much," Quatre said nonchalantly, swigging down the last of his chocolate milk.  
"Well, that's good. I'm goin' to bed."  
  
*****  
A.C. 197 - The Gundam pilots had sprung into action once more, and saved earth from a fatal colony drop as well as the misguided young tyrant Mariemaia Kushrenada. Dekim Barton, the insurrection's true leader and puppetmaster, was dead, entombed in his great fortress a hundred feet below the pavement of Brussels, Belgium.   
The Gundams had been reduced to ashes, except the Zero, which was now little more than a crumbling relic in the Smithsonian, plastic laminated over its near-indestructible armor, with glue in all its joints and caulk in all its circuits. There was a small set of stairs you could climb to get to its cockpit, which was filled with big, glossy posters of Wing Zero's pilot, Heero Yuy, as well as an authentic replica of the orange space suit he wore when he first came down through the earth's atmosphere. The engines had been removed, and the gigantic twin buster rifle was held in a glass case in another room.   
Heero went to visit Zero every now and then, but he found the experience to be unusually depressing. To him, it felt like going to an open-casket funeral for an old friend, but finding that his body had been desecrated by thieves in the night. Heero would sign autographs for the few aging war buffs who recognized his face, along with the hundreds of screaming pre-teen girls who had his poster on their bedroom walls. The other Gundam pilots faded from the spotlight, though Quatre sometimes went on TV and did public service announcements, and Duo modeled with his old-fashioned Catholic threads, which became the rage on California Island.  
The Gundam pilots went their separate ways for the most part. Duo went back to L-2 to run his salvage business with Hilde, Quatre went back to L-4 to run his family's business, Trowa went back to the circus with his sister, Catherine, Wufei was a Preventer headquartered in the Sanc Kingdom, and Heero stayed in Sanc as well. He visited Relena often, and the two went out for dinner when she finished her work, or coffee in the morning if she wasn't very busy that day. They weren't dates, Heero told himself. There was more familiarity between them, it wasn't about discovery; it was about just feeling comfortable around one another. Sally Po joked that they acted like an old married couple, and Wufei rebuked her with tempered harshness.  
The Gundam pilots met up at Howard's villa/naval base/repair shop in the Spice Islands every few months. They all acted more casual and relaxed when they met together. Heero didn't like it. That old cliché kept running in his head: It was quiet, too quiet. Somehow, this idyllic lifestyle was getting to him more than his hit-and-run lifestyle did during the war. He couldn't settle down, he needed to be occupied.   
Heero spent nearly all his money on an old-fashioned ground car, a gorgeous Ferrari 308, and punched up its horsepower with a Nitrous Oxide injector from his Gundam. It was fun, but there was simply no comparison to flying Wing Zero low over Earth's atmosphere.  
Heero then tried following Duo's example. He drank a little, smoked a little pot, and partied late at night with the long braided pilot. Heero didn't like being out of control of his own body though. He tried desperately not to think this way, but he couldn't deny what his brain was telling him, that these things lowered his effectiveness in combat. So he drank a little more, smoked a little more, and partied a little more, then gave it all up while he felt he still had a chance. It was suprisingly difficult.  
On one of their reunions at Howard's place, Quatre brought up that night that they shared the stories of each other's pasts. Duo, Wufei, and Trowa were still mute about their early lives, and Trowa had been acting kind of strange lately. After Quatre brought that up, Trowa started mumbling cryptically to himself. Late one night, after Duo and Wufei had gone up to bed on the third floor of the house, Quatre, Trowa, and Heero found themselves in an eerily familiar situation. Quatre decided to ask Trowa what had been bothering him so much.  
"Nothing...nothing." Trowa said in a nearly inaudible whisper.  
"I'll make us some coffee, and we can discuss this over it," Quatre said. "Heero, how do you take yours?"  
"Black," the grim pilot responded.  
"I should've figured. And you, Trowa?" Quatre looked over at his friend with an increasing amount of concern. Trowa, had curled up, hugging his legs and rocking back and forth. He was whispering something that sounded like: "moon...life...hanged man." Quatre felt tears of frustration and fear welling up in his eyes, but he pushed them back with some difficulty.  
"I'll make it just like mine," he said in a soothing voice, "lotsa cream and lotsa sugar." Trowa stopped rocking back and forth. As Quatre got up to make the coffee, Trowa's whispering ceased as well. Coherent words formed in his mouth for the first time in hours.  
"...with cinnamon," he said quietly.  
  
*****  
  
Duo was suddenly jolted awake by a thunderous sound right outside his window. He lifted up part of the venetian blind with his left hand, and his eyes widened in shock. Outside, a huge mobile suit had landed only a few hundred feet away. It was painted blue and white, and had openings reminiscent of giant pores, giving the suit an organic look. It was dark outside, but Duo could easily see that the suit was larger than any of the Gundams, even the Wing Zero. There was a knock at his door, and Duo reached for the Desert Eagle .50 that he kept hidden under his pillow. The door was suddenly kicked open and a tall, wiry man stepped in from the light of the hallway.  
The stranger looked at Duo, then shined an incredibly bright flashlight at the young pilot. Duo held a hand up to shield his eyes.  
"Hey, who the hell are you?" he yelled. He then heard the man curse under his breath.  
"That doesn't matter. You're not Heero Yuy."  
"No shit I'm not Heero Yuy! Now tell me who you are!" Duo demanded forcefully. The man, unfazed, pulled out a 9mm pistol with a huge silencer. At that instant, Duo dove for the pillow hiding his own weapon. Just when he had the soft purchase of his bedspread in his hands, there was a yellow-white flash, with hardly any sound accompanying it at all, and he was thrown into a wall at the opposite end of the room. Duo felt completely numb with shock. Eventually, he came back down to earth and was immediately greeted by the worst pain he had ever felt in his life: a white fire drilling horribly into his side. That sonofabitch shot me, he thought hatefully, and then he lost conciseness.  
  
*****  
  
Trowa drank his coffee with cinnamon, an uncharacteristic grin spreading across his face. "I suppose there will never be a better time," he said, the smile fading fast from his face. And with that he began again where Quatre and Heero had left off two years prior, sharing his life with the two of them...  
  
End of 2nd Interlude  
  
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